WHEN you see the appellation “MD” after the name of a person, you know right away that that person is a doctor. When you see the letters “MBA” after a person’s name, this announces to the world that he or she holds a Master’s degree in business administration. But have you seen the letters “APR” after the names of certain people, and wondered what they stood for and what these people do for a living?
APR stands for “Accreditation in Public Relations.” This is the distinction that the Public Relations Society of the Philippines (PRSP) confers on a member only after that member undergoes a rigorous process that involves the review or evaluation of his or her qualifications by a “jury” of his or her peers, and after he or she has passed written and oral examinations and a final interview by the PRSP’s accreditation board.
How the APR started
THE APR program was actually started by the PRSP’s older counterpart in the United States, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), in 1964. The visionary leaders of the PRSA at the time launched it in order to recognize practitioners who have mastered the knowledge, skills and abilities needed to develop and deliver strategic communications.
A few years later, in 1967, Jose Carpio and other Filipino PR pioneers put up the PRSP, patterning after the PRSA. In due time, the PRSP came up with its own version of the PRSA’s APR, whose aim, as stated in the PRSP’s APR brochure, was to put in place a system of accreditation as the centerpiece of its program to standardize and professionalize the practice of PR in the Philippines.
This recognizes, as the brochure further states, the fact that PR in the country has yet to maintain the level of maturity shown in some countries. Therefore, by aspiring for the APR, Filipino PR practitioners would be encouraged to become compleat PR professionals who are not only good communicators, but are also conversant in management, marketing, finance, advertising, sales promotions, employee engagement, ethics, social entrepreneurship and other socially relevant fields. In addition, they must also exhibit initiative, creativity, innovativeness and persuasiveness to influence others to adopt their point of view.
Criteria for APR candidates
THUS, the qualifications set in the PRSP’s APR program are quite high. To be nominated, APR candidates must have:
- At least five years of paid or full-time experience in the professional practice of PR, or of teaching or administering PR courses in a recognized university.
- A body of work that has shown a superior degree of competence, and an appreciation and understanding of the magnitude of the responsibility of a PR practitioner.
- Actual practice that is marked with integrity and ethics, and that has earned the respect of his or her superiors or peers.
- A proven track record and experience that includes managing a team of specialists and counseling a company’s top executives.
‘Gold standard’ of PR
HOW has the APR program, both of the PRSA and the PRSP, fared in the last 50 years? In the PRSA’s own evaluation, even as PR has evolved, the APR has become—and remains to be—the “gold standard” for the PR profession in the US. The same can be said of PRSP’s APR program.
The PRSA has changed the procedure of accreditation required to earn the APR, especially in the last two decades, when the media environment has been literally transformed by the emergence of real-time and fast-spreading digital and social media and the 24-hour news cycle, among others. The same proven capability in dealing with the so-called new media has been among the main criteria by which nominees for the PRSP’s APR are judged in recent years.
Value behind APR
WHILE the procedures have changed, as the practice of PR and the media environment continue to evolve, one thing has not changed: the value behind the accreditation and the importance it plays in society.
So the next time you meet a person with an APR after his or her name, you’ll know that he or she is in PR. More important, you’ll know he or she is a PR professional in the truest and fullest sense of the word. Indeed, the APR can be considered as a badge of PR excellence.